JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I've made no secret over the years of my love for science fiction, so I was thrilled to hear my good friend (and award-winning author and journalist) Denise Hamilton was helming a speculative fiction anthology. Denise is a born-and-bred Angelena, and the City of Angels has featured heavily in almost all her fiction. So it's no surprise that when Akashic Books went looking for an editor to put together a story collection that truly represented the cultural breadth and diversity of Los Angeles, they asked Denise. How did it work out? Amazingly, of course. Strap into your flying car, because this isn't your mother's future...
In this pandemic year when the veil of reality has never seemed so thin, I’ve fantasized heavily about alternate timelines. Bring me a world where Covid was contained like SARS or Ebola, the world went blithely on, and only the time travelers realized the magnitude of the bullet we’d dodged.
While in lockdown I’ve also been reading a lot of speculative fiction - space opera, fantasy, shapeshifters, future dystopia, modern fairy tales - anything that catapults me into a surreal world different from the surreal reality we share today.
In this, I’m probably not alone. A lot of mystery folk write and read fantasy and sci-fi, and if you’re one of them, I’m curious to know your faves. Personally, I’ve been blown away recently by a lot of the new BIPOC and LGBQT speculative fiction. Novels like Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, American War by Omar El Akkad and N.K. Jemison’s Shattered Earth trilogy offer fresh, brilliant perspectives that enrich and renew the genre.
I’ve also thought deeply about speculative fiction because I’ve just edited a new anthology for Akashic Books called Speculative Los Angeles. It follows the same blueprint as the popular City Noir series, which now includes Delhi Noir, Baltimore Noir, Tokyo Noir, Paris Noir and hundreds more. (n.b. I edited the two volumes of Los Angeles Noir).
In a city that’s already half-mythical, where the fantasies spun by Hollywood outshine reality, my challenge as editor was to capture LA’s un-reality in a way that felt fresh and revelatory. That meant reaching out to authors who reflected the multicultural vitality of the city and conjured up an L.A. we haven’t seen before in Blade Runner and Terminator 2 and that final scene in Day of the Locust. I’m sure I’m missing a ton of cultural touchstones about apocalyptic LA, so drop me a line with your favorite.
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Traditionally, Southern California sci-fi and fantasy heavyweights like Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, and Philip K. Dick reflected the white male domination of the genre. But in the late 1970s, L.A. African-American writer Octavia Butler began to crack that pantheon, and her time travel book Kindred (1979) and dystopian LA novel Parable of the Sower (1993) are finding new readers each day, which makes me so happy. I only wish that Butler, who died in 2006, could have seen all her new fans.
Speculative Los Angeles is dedicated to Butler’s memory. The anthology includes exciting new voices like S. Qiouyi Lu, whose story unfolds in a suburban landfill where giant mecha robots piloted by humans battle to the death and the Chinese Exclusion Act has brought renewed racism. It features Ben H. Winters, whose award-winning crime novels are all set in a speculative but utterly recognizable United States. Noir writer Duane Swierczyinski imagines a destroyed Hollywood where psychic death cults gather in crumbling theaters to wreak destruction. National Book Award winner Charles Yu embraces black holes in suburbia, and Alex Espinoza writes a 21st century changeling tale of an immigrant toddler who returns from ICE detention to a mother who insists her son has been replaced by a replicant. Mothers know those things, don’t they?
When I’m not writing or editing for work, I’ve discovered new voices like Aliette de Bodard and Courttia Newland and revisited old favorites like Frank Herbert, Paolo Bacigalupi, Francesca Lia Block, China Mieville, and even J. R.R. Tolkein. I’ve also rewatched some Outer Limits and Twilight Zone episodes. (factoid: Harlan Ellison wrote several Outer Limits episodes, including one set inside LA’s famous Bradbury Building downtown). If you’re crossing genres, what new authors have you discovered? And which U.S. city filled with ghosts, demons, urban myths and haunted landscapes should be up next for Akashic’s Speculative City series?
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Denise Hamilton is the author of seven crime novels, including the Eve Diamond series, The Last Embrace and Damage Control. A former L.A. Times reporter, she is also a Fulbright scholar and edited Los Angeles Noir and Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics. Her latest project, Speculative Los Angeles, is available at all bookstores and can be ordered direct from the publisher here. You can friend Denise on Facebook and follow her on Twitter as @DeniseHamilton_.
